Juan David Reina Rozo

The Communal innovation (CI) is defined as the new ways to do something or resolve one problem in a novel way from the epistemology and ontology of the community to foster the social fabric. These can be technological such as artifacts or tools and even socio-institutional at the level of social organization. Communal innovation has been emerging from the field of innovation studies recently. Particularly from grassroots approach to understand the practices of individual and community based organizations. The focus of CI are related with transformation of their conditions. This abstract is oriented to share some challenges around CI research with communities in the post-agreement period in Colombia and some reflections in terms of the research activities in the Universities. 

Colombia after 52 years of intern conflict have signed one agreement with F FARC-EP. Since 2017 “post-conflict” period had started, now the Academia has enormous challenges in terms of social justice and peace. Engineering faculties around the country has a historical debt with marginalized communities in their territories. Its time to start new strong processes of building relationships between those actors. Universidad Nacional de Colombia is celebrating 150 of history, they have open projects and visions on community level in this new country, related with solidarity outreach, even some courses such as Cátedra Ingenio, Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, now is the moment to open and co-create research activities with communities, specially in areas that were territory of conflict.

The experiences come from the research project called: “Implications of collaboration in local innovation ecosystems” as part of the PhD in Engineering – Industry and Organization at Universidad Nacional de Colombia and collaboration with the D-Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The case study is the Consejo Comunitario del Alto Rio Guapi placed in Cauca department (pacific zone) of the Colombia Republic. There are external and internal challenges inside the research process, from some different phases as problem framing, conceptualization, and even justify why this project is part of the Engineering School. Also, during the field work, the qualitative methods, approaches, imaginary and documentation are quite challenge also.

Finally, some of the reflections and conclusions are preliminary because the research in not concluded. But, we can underline some: a) There are misunderstanding and a close vision about innovation in universities. The hegemonic view about innovation is only in terms of firms and market. b) The engineering field needs to understand more qualitative research methods and integrate in its practices. c) There are expectations and motivation of the communities that we as academics -and activists- have to understand and put in dialogue with the research aim from a participatory point of view. d) The engineers need to explore new ways to co-produce knowledge and innovation with actors that were and are marginalized.